The Silk Road ran from the Chinese seaboard to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. It was not a single road but a network of trade routes, extending some four thousand miles. First constructed in the Han Dynasty, around the first century BCE, it became the superhighway of the ancient world, linking the civilizations of China, India, Persia, Arabia, Greece and Rome. Along it were traded gold, jade, spices and, of course, silk. Along it were traded, too, ideas, philosophies and religions. It was along the Silk Road that Buddhism came to China.
